Windows, macOS and Linux made up font-wise, and since then, all modern fonts have been compatible across those OS’. There’s no question, the future of web typography looks promising. At the 2016 ATypI conference, the world’s biggest type design conference, Microsoft, Google, Apple and Adobe announced that they have been working on a new iteration of the OpenType standard, called variable fonts. Because it gives a lot more control to the user to modify the typeface depending on the context and device, this new version opens new opportunities for web typography and will close the gap in quality between web and print. In this article, François Poizat will show you the ins and outs of these new tools and how to take control of our typography.
Read more…
In this article, Aidan Sliney is not going to make you the next Instagram, but he will hopefully help you get a nice base level of users that you can grow from. The example app in this article received 100,000 downloads in eight weeks. This is with a marketing budget of zero and very little work since launch. Aidan will cover the basic app store optimizations that will help bring people to your Google Play page. Getting them to download and stay is up to you and up to the value your app provides. Of course, to get traction, you need to pick a topic in which enough people are interested, and then the quality of your build is what is going to help keep these users.
Read more…
With iOS 10.3, Apple has gifted the world powerful new features, as well as fixes for critical security holes. For your typical iPhone user, it’s a really nice upgrade. For a software developer who is responsible for either a mobile website or a native app, it can be a huge pain, because Apple changed the confirmation alert into a new non-blocking dialog. For developers, there is a hidden change that has more important implications: the App Store had always received a special exemption from the old version of this alert, but that exemption has now been removed.
Read more…
Today, developers can help to defend their users’ personal privacy by adopting the Privacy by Design (PbD) framework. The PbD framework poses challenges that only you can answer. No one else can do it for you: it is your responsibility to commence the process. These common-sense steps will become a requirement under the EU’s imminent data protection overhaul, but the benefits of the framework go far beyond legal compliance. In this article, Heather Burns will give you an insight into the PbD framework.
Read more…
In the past 10 years, a big portion of the Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conferences has been devoted to iOS. This is where we learned about the first iPhone SDK, notifications, share and today widgets, the iOS 7 redesign, iPad multitasking, and other iOS milestones. I was genuinely surprised with some of the announcements this year. In this article, Lou Franco brings you his overview of what happened this WWDC season, with code samples. If you want to try out any of the sample projects, you are going to have to update your Mac to macOS Sierra 10.12.5 (the latest point release), and have Xcode 9 installed.
Read more…
As digital and offline experiences got more intertwined, new interactive advertising formats emerged, with a promise to capture the most scarce and valuable marketing asset of all — people’s attention. The latest mobile trends show promise that publishers and advertisers are getting smarter about the user experience. Google is working to recapture lost attention with a crackdown on mobile pop-ups, and marketers are easing off of aggressive acquisition strategies to focus on retention. In this article, Anya Pratskevich will look at some of the biggest trends in mobile marketing.
Read more…
All professionals should frequently question their methodologies and see what other options exist. If one approach was previously the best, that does not mean it remains the best. This analysis is often more difficult in software development because new frameworks and technologies emerge almost as quickly as they die off. In this article, Paul Frances will apply this analysis to hybrid mobile apps and present why he believes that React Native is in many ways a superior solution for apps developed in 2017. To do this, he will revisit why hybrid apps were created initially and explore how we got to this point.
Read more…
Fuse is not only used to describe the UI and layout; you can also use it to add effects and animation. In this article, Wern Ancheta will show you what Fuse is all about. He’ll show you how it works and how it compares to other platforms such as React Native and NativeScript. In the second half of the article, you will create your first Fuse app. Specifically, you will create a weather app that shows the weather based on the user’s current location. Towards the end of the article, you will consolidate your learning by looking at the advantages and disadvantages of using Fuse for your next mobile app project.
Read more…
OAuth2 is the protocol that enables anyone to log in with their Facebook account. It powers the “Log in with Facebook” button in apps and on websites everywhere. In this article, Zack Grossbart will show you how “Log in with Facebook” works and will explain the protocol behind it all. He’ll look at two examples: why Spotify uses Facebook to let you log into the Spotify mobile app, and why Quora uses Google and Facebook to let you log into its website.
Read more…
Apple’s GameplayKit has several algorithms and data structures that make it easier to follow game development best practices. When you develop a game, you need to sprinkle conditionals everywhere. If Pac-Man eats a power pill, then ghosts should run away. GKRuleSystem, lets you build up complex conditional logic from smaller pieces. By structuring your code around it, you’ll create rules that are easier to change or reuse for new levels. In this article, we’re going to take typical game logic code and learn how to represent it as a rule system.
Read more…